April 24, 2025 • 42 mins
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Solomonster drops a special Sound Off Extra reacting to the fallout from the WrestleMania 41 main event and The Rock missing from the show, as well as his comments on The Pat McAfee Show attempting to do damage control after the criticism that has come his way. Some of his comments were very revealing, but it doesn't change the fact that his participation in the angle leading up to the show was completely unnecessary and actually did more harm than good.
***
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EXPRESSVPN - Get an extra FOUR MONTHS FREE of the #1 trusted VPN at http://www.expressvpn.com/solomonster
Solomonster drops a special Sound Off Extra reacting to the fallout from the WrestleMania 41 main event and The Rock missing from the show, as well as his comments on The Pat McAfee Show attempting to do damage control after the criticism that has come his way. Some of his comments were very revealing, but it doesn't change the fact that his participation in the angle leading up to the show was completely unnecessary and actually did more harm than good.
***
Follow Solomonster on X (formerly Twitter) for news and opinion:
http://x.com/solomonster
Subscribe to the Solomonster Sounds Off on YouTube:
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Become a Solomonster Sounds Off Channel Member:
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, Solo Monster here and I'm not doing a
podcast this weekend because I am not going to be here,
but I could not let this whole Rock fiasco go
by without at least putting up a video for you
guys here on the YouTube chatnel talking about all of
this non sense. There's been a lot of talk and
chatter about the WrestleMania finish to Cody Rhodes and John
(00:22):
Sena WrestleMania Sunday being just almost universally panned, and deservedly
so because it sucked. Not that sena one number seventeen,
I had no issue with that at all, but the
match itself just not being very good. And then on
top of that, the way that everything played out for
the finish and Travis Scott Rock not being around just
(00:42):
really most everything since the elimination Chamber because of the
absence of The Rock, who became the focal point of
this entire thing, it just made for a very lame
finish a WrestleMania him not being there. So then late
on Monday came the sudden announcement that The Rock was
going to be appearing on the Pat McAfee show the
(01:03):
next day. Clean up on Aisle five. That's exactly what
this felt like. Damage control is not just the name
of a faction in WWE. It was on full display Tuesday.
So finally The Rock broke his silence as to why
he was not part of the build to John Cena
against Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania and why he did not
(01:26):
appear at all on the biggest show of the year.
This man did more to promote New Japan Pro Wrestling
and Rubik's Cube sales than he did wrestle media and
his answer it didn't make sense for the final Boss.
That don't work for me, brother. Nearly forty minutes he
(01:47):
spent talking about everything from Roman reigns and the Night
one main event, to Cody and Sina on Night two
and Travis Scott and his movies and his Papa Tuey
skincare line. You should have seen the people in the
live chat, because I was watching the Pat McAfee stream
on YouTube when Rock was on. You should have seen
(02:08):
these people in the live chat who are not wrestling
fans and they don't give two shits about wrestling. Like
thirty minutes into this, Rock is talking about his grooming
products and they are just begging for Pat to please
move on and talk actual sports. And you know, of
all the things that Rock talked about, the one thing
he did not talk about was the UFL, which he
(02:29):
is part owner of and would at least fit into
that sports discussion. That didn't come up. But all this
other stuff came up. But among the things that he
revealed is that he watched WrestleMania forty one from home
because he wanted the spotlight to be on John Cena.
And he also claimed that he only appeared at Elimination
Chamber because Ari Emmanuel called him due to ticket sales
(02:53):
being soft for the show in Toronto, so he came
to The Rock basically to beg The Rock to be
on the show to save ticket sales. As if as
if the ticket sales were horrendous. I mean, they may
have been soft, but you know, it's not like they
weren't selling tickets. But this is what led to The
Rock coming up with the idea for Cody's Soul, and
those conversations led to the idea from Triple H suggesting, hey,
(03:17):
why don't we turn John Cena heel? But really, if
you think about what Rock said on the Pat McAfee show.
Really what he did, I think it's fair to infer
this from the comments that he made. He revealed that
they had no real big creative direction for their key
match for WrestleMania, and what it boiled down to was
(03:38):
Ari Emmanuel wanting Rock to come into to goose ticket
sales for the pl e before WrestleMania, which is crazy, Like,
weeks before the Chamber Triple h just randomly comes up with, Hey,
why don't we turn John cita Heel, one of the
biggest stars in the history of our company who's in
his retirement year. You know, we hadn't thought about this,
(03:59):
so hey, why don't we turned John Cenaheel? Like, isn't
that the sort of thing they should already have thought
about two months before their biggest show of the year.
So let me go through what he said here, because
it's a lot too unpack here in rock speak, said,
speaking as DJ as Rock director of the Board and
(04:20):
not the final Boss, I got to tell you that
let's start with that ending and start with John becoming
the seventeen time heavyweight champion and becoming legitimizing himself. He
says as being without question the goat he is on
Mount Rushmore. Now got to kick a guy off to
put him on. I think now Dusty goes to the back.
He was always on my Mount Rushmore. He goes on
(04:42):
the back there with me. I'll be raising my eyebrows
back there in the back of Mount Rushmore. But I
think that the way John at the end of the
night raising the title, that was the bottom line, that
was the north Star.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
And I loved it. I love that moment.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I think he's going to go on to have this
insane run as a heel. And what I love about
this and what I love about John is I like
to think that I keep not only my finger on
the pulse of things. You and I have talked about this.
Don't keep your finger on the pulse of put your
whole hand on the pulse of things. And that way things.
And that means what is he saying here, meaning the
(05:18):
fans in their sentiment. And I love that the fans
are so engaged, they're so connected to John's heel turn.
Now I see a few fans saying that, oh, I
really don't believe he's a bad guy. So he's playing
a bad guy. But here's the thing, you don't have
to believe that he's a bad guy. You know why,
because he's not a bad guy. He's a good guy.
(05:38):
I've known the guy for twenty years. We've gone up
and down to Helen back. We talk all the time,
we text all the time. He's not a bad guy.
He's telling the truth now and you could feel that
in his delivery because he's telling the truth. This is
twenty five years of Imagine going out every single night
for twenty five years, regardless of where you're at and
(05:59):
knowing that you're gonna get cheered and know that you're
going to get booed, and in some places it's even harder,
you're going to get booed out of the building. That's
a hard psychological place to be. I give John so
much credit, and he goes on from there and he's
he's giving scene of more praise for taking a risk
and going heal. But then he gets into the real
meat and potatoes of this. He goes I got a
(06:21):
call about a month before the elimination chamber from Ari Emanuel,
who we know owns TKO. TKO owns WWE. He's been
my longtime business partner and one of my best friends
for over twenty years. He said, we need help at
Elimination Chamber. Ticket sales are a little slow. But beyond that,
he goes, what we're finding is with Elimination Chamber, it's
(06:41):
become the pay per view that's been interesting. You know,
fans have fun, but it's also a conduit to WrestleMania.
And how do we create an elimination chamber that people
have to tune in to see?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
How do we create that?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And he goes, right now, we don't have that, and
he said, let's have the Final Boss show up. What
if the Final Boss appear years and the Elimination Chamber?
I said, well, let me give it some thought and
let me get back to you on that. And so
I did, and I got back to Ari, and I
got back to Triple H and Nick Cohn and we
had a call and I said, I have an idea.
What's most important to the Final Boss. It's not titles,
(07:17):
it's not money, it's not fame, been there, done that,
grateful for that. Final Boss wants your soul. So then
he gets into this discussion about how it was a
litmus test. They were taking a temperature check to see
how the fans would respond to Cody possibly going heel
and selling his soul to the Rock, and he basically
(07:39):
he believes that Cody's got this great heel run in him.
He's not wrong when he says that, I think Cody
has it within him to have a great heel run
down the line.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
And Rock was saying all the right things here in
this interview.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I'm not talking about turning Cody heel now, I'm talking
about doing it down the road. What I believe is
that Rock probably wanted Cody to go heel.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I think the idea it was for Cody Rose to
sell his soul to the Rock, And there were people there,
whether it was Cody himself or Triple H, who had
enough sense to say no and push back and say
that's a fucking dumb idea, which it would have been.
It would have been a fucking stupid idea for Cody Roads,
their number one babyface right now who up until recently,
it wasn't until this program with John Cena that we
(08:21):
first started seeing fans booing Cody in some places, his
reactions were still rock solid, right one of their top
merch movers, Like people bought into Cody Rhoads. The American
Nightmare WWE champion. As he was coming upon his first
year as champion, he was getting good reactions from the crowd.
(08:41):
Now all of a sudden, and this was always going
to be a risk, you know, putting him in there
with John Cena. Whether Sena was a babyface or a
heel in some places, and I don't know if it
was just the veguest thing for WrestleMania. We saw it
a few weeks ago on TV. There now are at
least pockets of people who have taken to booing Cody,
not happening before this. So yes, Rock absolutely Cody down
(09:05):
the road great heel. I don't believe for a second
that he's looking at this and going, oh, I don't
want Cody to go heill now, but like you know,
later on down the road. No, I think he did
want Cody to go heill now. And I think John
Cena was the second choice. And Triple H is the
one who kind of threw it out there and said
what if John won heel, which Rock in this interview said, oh,
(09:26):
I think that's a great idea. I said, I love it,
But now you got to ask John how he feels
about it, And of course John seen is gonna say
yes because John Cena has said before like he shows
up to work and this is how he was with Vince,
where he doesn't politic he doesn't lobby for matches. He
has said, I've never in my entire career lobbied for
(09:47):
a match. I want to work with this guy, gotta
work with this person. And I get the sense that
he shows up and maybe he'll have some creative input
into certain things, but he largely just kind of goes
with the flow. Whatever they want me to do, Okay,
you're the boss, I'll do it. I mean, it seems
pretty apparent, even based on what they've had him do
here during this program.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
It's like, hey, John, what do you think about this? Okay? Sure?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And of course, because John Cena he's got one foot
out the door, he's got one foot out the door already,
he doesn't care and he's probably thinking, okay, yeah, I
never had the chance to do this before, you know,
after I had been you know, turned baby face. I
wanted to go heel. We didn't do it. So yeah, okay, sure, fine, whatever,
he's practically already done. He doesn't give a shit you
(10:33):
want me to turn heel I'll turn heel, sure, But
the whole thing with Rock, you know, and Cody and everything,
it was Meltzer. It was actually Meltzer many many months ago,
who I think was the one who reported that Rock
wanted Cody to go heal and there was pushback and
Sena was the second choice. And you know, a lot
of people have mocked Dave for his reports on this
(10:55):
and other things that he has gotten wrong, but you
know what, he has owed an apology not only by
myself and other content creators, but honestly by the Rock.
Because after that report came out months and months ago
that Rock was not going to be at WrestleMania, Rock
himself applied to someone's comment on Instagram and said, in
so many words that that's bullshit or don't buy into
(11:17):
that bullshit. So if anybody owes Meltzer, honestly, the biggest
apology should be coming from the Rock, because as it
turned out, he was right, and the Rock was sitting
on his ass at home watching WrestleMania just like everybody else.
But he went on and on about how smart Cody
is and what an intelligent guy he is, and oh,
(11:37):
you know, Triple H is great. You know, I've been
kicking around ideas with this guy for twenty years, and
you know, all this stuff and blah blah blah. He's
letting us into the creative process here and how this all,
you know, this all came together. And then he said,
we had this great thing at Elimination Chamber. This is
you know, very successful segment with him and John Cena
(11:59):
and Travis Scott. And he called John after the Elimination Chamber.
I talked to him, I talked to Cody, and I said,
I think the Final Boss's work here is done. Like
we've established it. We've pulled off the greatest angle in
the history of professional wrestling other than Hulk Hogan turning
heel back.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
In the nineties.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I'm glad he said that, by the way, because that's
still number one. He said, I think this is amazing.
We have six weeks now, let's build you now, go
out there and build to it, go crush it, and
I'll be right there with you, and I'm always here
if you need me. But I think it's best for
the Final Boss to not be involved in that finish.
You guys go, You've got six weeks to plan for that,
(12:42):
which again is crazy to me that they were that
close to WrestleMania, their biggest event of the year, and
seemingly had no other grand plan, or maybe they did,
and they were very easy to just sort of cast
it aside and have six weeks to try to build
something with a guy who wasn't even going to be
there every single week. I mean they did that turn
(13:04):
at Elimination Chamber. We didn't see seen it for two weeks.
Two weeks later, he showed up, never even addressed Cody.
Roads showed up the following week in Glasgow, didn't really
address Cody Rhads. Cody addressed him, but he had nothing
really to say about Cody. It wasn't until they got
to London at the very end, almost a month. It
(13:25):
was basically a month after the Elimination Chamber, and we
got a great back and forth between Cody and Sina.
Finally it took a fucking month to get it. And
that was basically all we got on until the night
before Madio and they were on SmackDown together, So Sina
wasn't even there every single week Rock. It actually would
have been helpful. I think for Rock you can plug
(13:46):
him into a spot here and there, maybe on a
week where Sina wasn't going to be there. But again,
you know in this bill to WrestleMania, what was missing
is they decided to tell this story or Sina did.
This is his take on it, where, yeah, I'm not
going to give the fans what they want. You want gear,
you want new music. I'm not doing this because I
know you want it. You get nothing from me, right,
That's the story they've decided to go with. The problem
(14:09):
is a year ago, you think back to that build
to WrestleMania forty, which ended up being great, but it
was a complete just clusterfuck how we got there. I mean,
I look back on that and it's like, I can't
believe that we had Cody Rhodes win the Royal Rumble
and then the idea was for The Rock to just
show up and take his spot the way that he did,
and that somebody thought that that was a great idea.
(14:29):
I don't even know the Triple h honestly thought that
was a great idea. But you know, this is what
the Rock wants to do. When The Rock wants his
match with Roman Reigns, which he ended up not getting
because he saw the blowback, and this is the thing
about The Rock. He's very, very cognizant of the online
reaction because he saw the reaction and he had a pivot.
He talked about this in the making of wrestle Batia
(14:50):
forty documentary. That's where the meme photo comes from. He's
sitting there and he's he's waving his arms around. He's
talking about how this happened and how that happened, and
got to listen to the people. Sometimes he was getting
just destroyed by people on social media. So they pivoted
and we ended up with the Final Boss and in
the end it all worked out. But even the weeks
(15:11):
where Rock wasn't on the show, he would record these
social media videos and these Instagram videos and I look
forward to him every Friday there was going to be
a new ig drop from the Rock and he'd be
cutting a promo on Cody and Mama Rhodes, and you know,
it was entertaining and it got people excited for WrestleMania,
and of course it helped having that big storyline payoff
(15:31):
where Cody's got to finish the story. Roman finally loses,
like you weren't going to have that this year, and
so there is that recognition that whatever they were going
to come up with for Wrestle Media this year probably
wasn't going to be able to match that moment because
last year was like the big payoff to everything, but
we didn't have any of that this year. They shot
(15:52):
an angle with Rock and Seena standing side by side
together at the end of the elimination chamber. What did
they think the fans were going to thing? This is
what aggravates the shit out of me. There are times
where you will have these wrestlers or you know, people
who work for the company that will go well, just
you gotta let it play out. You can't just fantasy
book everything and you're gonna You're gonna come up with
(16:14):
all these grand ideas and when they don't happen, well,
you have nobody to blame for it but yourself. Sometimes
that's true. I'm guilty of that. Sometimes your mind is racing,
oh my god, this could go this way and this
way and this way, and then when it goes that way,
it's like, ah, fuck, that sucks. Yea, this idea was better.
Well yeah, but you're the one who, you know, decided
to try to come up with all these ideas and
(16:36):
you set yourself up for disappointment. But in this case,
you cannot tell me that they expected most people to
look at what they did in Toronto on that show
and not assume that there was now an alliance of
some sort between The Rock and John Cena and that
we wouldn't see them at some point at least once
or twice together standing in the ring on TV like
(16:57):
we had Rock and Romans standing together united the ring
on TV. In the build up to last year's show,
we got nothing. John Cena wasn't on social media cutting promos,
dropping him every week when he wasn't there. John Cena
didn't do shit outside of what we saw him doing
on TV. He posts his motivational quotes on X like
he always does, and that's it. And we only got
(17:20):
him when we got him, which wasn't every week. We
didn't have that same level of engagement. We didn't have
the same kind of fun leading up to this match
at WrestleMania, and then we had last year. Oh, but
that's what John Cena wants. He doesn't want you to
have fun. That's the whole point, Solomon, So you're missing
the whole point of the story. This is not supposed
to be fun This is not supposed to be fun Boy.
Is that a shitty build to WrestleMania. I hope that's
(17:43):
not gonna be the way it is for the rest
of the year. I hope we didn't get a shitty
main event at WrestleMania because it was supposed to be
that way, because we got John Cena for the rest
of the fucking year. The way people will try to
rationalize these things is ridiculous to me. I cannot hold
anybody respond who saw what they did at Elimination Chamber
and got excited, assuming that we were going to get
(18:04):
Rock and Seena together on TV in some way, or
certainly we would see some kind of follow up or
pay off to this WrestleMania with the two of them,
and they gave us nothing. People have a right to
be disappointed. People have a right to be upset about that,
and they don't need it thrown back in their face
like they're wrong for not enjoying what they're being given.
(18:24):
Triple h was making comments like that leading up to
WrestleMania the interview he did with Peter Rosenberg Man, I
wish the critics would just fuck off, just be a fan,
just shut up.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Remember when Rock showed up on NXT back in January.
First we had him on the Netflix premiere and he
was board member Dwayne pointing out Cody in the front row.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
He's my boy.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Me and Cody were going to share some teremana later,
and people like they were aghast, like this is how
you follow up to all the Rock and Cody stuff
from last year. Now they're like best friends. It's ridiculous
that that's the follow up.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
To everything here.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
But then he showed up on NXT and he said,
I didn't plan any comments. I have no idea what
I'm going to say. I'm just going to go out there,
And it was very apparent that he had not given
any thought to what he was going to say, and
maybe he had a little Teremana before he went out there.
Because that promo, that whole segment to close out that
episode of nxtm me, I know why they did it,
because they popped a huge number. I think they did
(19:24):
like nine hundred and fifty thousand people on CW that night.
But it was fucking terrible. But you remember what Rock
said during that promo. Basically it was like shut your
mouth and enjoy the ride the Rock is going to
take you on. The Rock is thinking twenty steps ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
No, he's not.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
He was full of shit when he said that, literally,
just trying to come up with shit to say before
they went off the air. They just wanted to rock
on the show to pop a number, which they did great.
It didn't mean anything, There was nothing. There was no
substance to what he was saying. Let the Rock take
you on the ride that he's going to take you on.
There was no ride. There's no ride. This ride went
(20:02):
about as well as Austin's atv at WrestleMania. This week's
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(23:05):
of the match. Now I would have finessed things a
little differently on how they got there, but that's just
me creatively. There's a lot of minds in the room,
but that's my thought. But ultimately the bottom line is
I love John getting number seventeen. My thoughts are always
to Cody because of what we've established with him and
his story and the kind of babyface that he is.
(23:27):
So if done right, and I think if it was
finessed right and if nuanced right down the road, that
could work, that guy can have an incredible not only
babyface run again his champion, but also an unheard of
run as a heel down the road. And then I'm
not being involved in the finish of the match, he said.
(23:47):
They know when I come to them and them meeting
Triple H and Nick and Ari and I lay this
out and I say, hey, here's how I really feel
it should go. We can insert the final boss in
the end of this finish, but then where do we go?
There are other commitments that I have, and I want
to also be careful that we're not overstepping and leaning
over our skis too much here to get involved with
(24:09):
the finish, And I said, why get involved when the
spotlight should just be on John seventeen time heel Champion.
What does twenty twenty five look like. If this man
is saying he's going to ruin professional wrestling, that to
me is the anchoring storyline. It's not the soul right now.
And he's like, oh, but we'll go back to it
(24:30):
at some point. We'll get back to the soul stuff,
you know, down the road, and he's, you know, again,
blathering on and on and on, and he admits that
when Travis Scott came out at WrestleMania that most people
would have expected that Rock was coming out next, and
that's where he made the comment about how he was
trying to be diplomatic about it. Well, I would have
(24:51):
done this a little bit differently. I would have finessed
this or adjusted that. That was basically his way of
saying that, you know, Triple h and the career of
minds who put that finish together. They either didn't run
it by Rock and so he's basically throwing him under
the bus, or he maybe was aware of what they
were gonna do, but he's like, I better come out
(25:13):
here and say, well, you know, I would have done
this maybe a little bit differently, because people are shitting
all over it because it was fucking stupid, Like it
was very, very dumb. The minute that Travis Scott came out.
You heard Fien Fien fifty thousand times that weekend. But
here comes Travis Scott. You have to assume just based
on how the elimination cham pranded, which, by the way,
(25:34):
is the last time we saw Travis Scott. We also
saw Rock Rock literally walked to the ring with Travis Scott.
What do you think people were expecting? And that's what
just blows me away about this entire thing, that there
were people who actually thought this was a good idea. Yeah,
let's do the finish this way. We'll have Travis Scott
(25:54):
come out, and then we'll have Sena do all the
heel things that he'll Sena would do, and then he'll
just pin Cody and that'll be the end of it.
But you know, in a way, even though it might
not have affected the direct finish of the match, Travis
Scott was still out there affecting the outcome of the match. Right,
he took Cody's attention briefly away from John Cena. He
did play a role in the finish of this match,
(26:15):
and the Rock never showed his face. Would it have
made that much of a difference if Rock just showed
up and stood in the eye away and clapped for
John Cena, maybe at least it would have made sense
of things. You know, there are some people who I
saw trying to make the argument, well, Sena never really
sold his soul. He just went heel, Right, he just
(26:39):
kicked Cody in the balls, and he's articulated since then
why he did that. He resents Cody and so that's
why he did what he did. None of it makes
any sense, and anybody trying to make sense of it, honestly,
I mean, is just embarrassing themselves. It doesn't make any sense.
John Cena had already won the elimination chamber the night
that he turned heel. He won the elimination chamber. He
(27:01):
had a guaranteed WWE Championship match of WrestleMania. And so
you look at it now and you say to yourself,
why didn't they just save the sceni heel turn for WrestleMania.
Why did Rock even have to be involved in this
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Let's take him at his word that Ari Emmanuel came
to him practically begging and saying, Rock, can we get
you on the Elimination Chamber. Tickets are a little soft,
Tickets are a little egy. I wonder why. I wonder
how much those fucking tickets were. Tickets are a little soft.
We need the final boss on the show. Ari Emmanuel
didn't come to The Rock and say, we need you
(27:38):
involved with Cody Rhodes and John Cena, we need you
involved in the top story on the show. He just said,
I need you in Toronto for the Elimination Chamber so
we can move more tickets, so we could put your
name on the poster. Remember when they updated the poster
for the Elimination Chamber, they took everybody off except The Rock. Literally,
the Rock was the only one on the updated poster.
They made it all about him. Nobody said that he
(27:59):
had to be involved with Cody in this He could
have done anything on the show. He could have had
a throwaway comedy segment with somebody in the mid card
that he could have given a fucking rock bottom to.
It wouldn't have mattered if all they were interested in
was selling tickets. The tickets were already bought and paid for.
You get your Rock appearance. And truly, if he's not
going to be involved in the bill to WrestleMania, he
(28:21):
goes home mission accomplished. You moved a few thousand extra tickets.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Good.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
But he came up with this whole elaborate idea about
Cody's soul and everything else. As soon as he inserted
himself into this main event storyline, he had an obligation
to follow through with what people would have expected out
of it, which is that the Rock is going to
be involved. Otherwise, I have no fucking idea why he
came up with that idea in the first place. He said,
let me get back to you, I'll come up with
(28:46):
an idea. This is all on him. This is all
on him. This was his idea, and I can only
imagine somebody like Triple You know, a lot of people
talk about the relationship between Rock and Triple H. And
there are a lot of conspiracy theorists out there. I
don't really think it's all that big of a conspiracy theory.
There has always been, always been, going back to when
they were still young guys trying to make their way
(29:07):
in this company, a professional tension and jealousy between the two.
And I think the jealousy part was probably more from
Triple H's side because Rock came in and he got
he got a lot, a lot quicker than Triple H did.
Because Triple H came in ninety five. Rock came in
at the end of ninety six and it wasn't all
rainbows for him initially with the Rocky mai Via stuff,
(29:29):
but within a year he was already on his way.
And I'm sure there was a jealousy there, and they
came up right neck and neck, right they were coming
up at the same time. That's why I say I
think Triple H and Rock like Rock is his greatest rival.
Very telling that he didn't mention Rock, by the way,
in his Hall of Fame speech mentioned a lot of
(29:49):
people but not Rock, but there was I think there
was always that tension there between them. I don't want
to say they hate each other. Maybe at one time
they did, but you can't tell me that there are
not a lot of games being played behind the scenes,
a lot of tit for tat. There's a lot of
shit going on behind the scenes that we could talk
(30:11):
about what we think is going on, but we probably
don't even know the half of it. And I'll get
to another aspect that is here in a moment. But
if you're Triple H and you're the head of creative
right you're the chief content officer, it's got to be
frustrating when the Rock just shows up, whether Ari told
him to or the Rock decided he wanted to and
(30:31):
blows everything up, Like what the original plan for WrestleMania
was going to be before the soul stuff. I would
love to know, like what they had, what they had
set in stone here two months before their biggest show
of the year. I go all the way back to
Bad Blood. Everybody was trying to like, oh, connect the dots.
This was all mapped out from a year earlier. This
(30:53):
is long term storytelling, This is long term booking. This
is cinema. They're cooking all these fucking dumb one words
people come up with the describe as shit. Rock showing
up at Bad Blood was nothing but Rock just wanting
to show up. He had his belt, He had his
Brahma bull belt that was given to him by Muhammad
Ali's widow. He walks all over the place with it.
(31:14):
He shows up at Bad Blood and then we don't
see him again for months until the Netflix premiere, and
then that's not the Rock, that's a Dwayne the board member.
So tell me what was the point of the Bad
Blood thing?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Then?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
If this was all part of long term booking and
long term storytelling, what the hell was the purpose of
his appearance in Atlanta at Bad Blood? There was none.
He got people talking, but it didn't lead to anything.
It went nowhere. So this is the kind of nonsense.
I'm sure Triple H looks at this and goes, ah,
fuck you, He's he's gonna.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Be on the show.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
All right, we got we gotta upend everything and come
up with you know what we're gonna do here. I'm
sure there's a lot of that going on. Look at
the Dave Lagrecis stuff. Okay took to his Instagram this
morning to respond to Dave Logreca criticizing the Rocks comments
on Pat McAfee's show now logreca I'm busted Open. He
(32:10):
went on a huge rant coming out of the WrestleMania
Made event on Sunday, to the point where I was
a little worried for the man's health. But he was
not happy about that finish either. But then there was
a whole other rant on Busted Open about some of
the comments that Rock made on McAfee's show, and in
particular the comments he made about how well, you know,
(32:31):
I would I would have finessed or adjusted the creative
a little bit on how they did things at WrestleMania.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
But you know, that's just me.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
And basically he said the same thing that I said before,
and I agree with him one hundred percent. He effectively
threw Triple H and his team under the bus with
those comments because what he was saying you don't have
to read, you know, too hard between the lines to
see what he was saying. He may have enjoyed, you know,
John winning number seventeen and the way that happened, but
if the Rock had full control the way that he
(32:58):
would have liked to, then that finish would not have
gone down the way it did. Maybe Travis Scott wouldn't
have been there because now he's taken a ton of
flack for not being there because Travis Scott was there
and led everybody to believe that he would be there.
So anyway, he responded to Lagreca, is what he said, Hi, Dave,
(33:19):
the business is a complete work, always has been, always
will be, every aspect of it, every match, every interview.
Please join me, Cody, Cina, Brian talking about Brian Gowertz
and the rest of us for our creative discussions so
you can expand your perspective. Until then, stop ranting. It's
(33:39):
not healthy, my friend, enjoy the show. PS tell Bubbaret
that I have Grand Marnier and hushpuppies for all of us.
So evidently Paul Leveck falls under the category of the
rest of us. That's certainly not going to quiet the
people who think that there is a lot of underlying
tension here behind the scenes between the Rock and Triple H.
(34:03):
And again, I don't think that's some grand conspiracy theory.
I think that absolutely is something that is a real
thing that is happening, and that may be the most
interesting story of all that plays out in these next
few years in WWE, because Can I envision a WWE
one day where it's Rock and Gowertz is sort of
(34:24):
his chief of staff, his right hand man, basically what
Patterson was to Vince. Can I envision a power structure
creatively in this company one day, and I don't know
when that would be, but one day where Rock is
the guy in charge, calling the shots and coming up
with the ideas, and Gowertz is his head writer or
his right hand man. Absolutely, and I think Triple H
(34:45):
knows this. So the minute that you see the WWE
business begins to take a dip and the numbers begin
to dip because business may be booming right now, but
it don't boom forever. What goes up must come down.
When that happens and things start to soften and come
back down to earth, that's when things get very interesting.
(35:07):
And Triple H, I'm sure one hundred percent understands this,
but you know him saying, you know, just just enjoy
it and stop ranting again, very similar to what we
heard Triple H saying in the lead up to WrestleMania.
And I just think it's completely insulting, you know, to
the fans when you just basically tell them shut up.
And just enjoy the show. We know what we're doing,
(35:28):
you don't, and just enjoy what we feed you, enjoy
what we give you. That was basically the Vince McMahon
mentality for so many years, and it almost feels like
we're right back to that, or maybe it never really changed,
but this is how they really feel, and the mask
is sort of slipping a little bit. And I think
the reason Triple H made the comments that he did
(35:50):
and sounded very defensive, which he was. I said, you know,
I think I mentioned this on on TNT the other day.
I said, when when your Triple H and you open
your little rant as he did by saying this is
going to sound defensive, it's because it sounds defensive. And
the reason I think he was so defensive is because
this is really the first time since he has fully
(36:12):
taken over as the head of creative where he was
really getting it, you know, as far as the criticisms
for the Road to WrestleMania, he was really getting hit
hard and taking it on the chin in a way
that he didn't last year or even the year before.
And he's not used to that. Right, He's the Savior,
thank God, the evil bad man is gone, and we
(36:32):
have Triple H now running creative and I do think
we've gotten more good than bad. I'm certainly not like
one of these fucking idiots who's like, oh, we need
Vince back. We got to have Vince back now, Like
sit the fuck down. But he hasn't taken criticism like this,
and I think he's getting very defensive about it, and
that's why you see him lashing out because we didn't
(36:53):
hear any of this in the lead up to WrestleMania
last year, but we got it this year. So the
whole situation and just to me, it's a mess. Rock
even coming out and making the comments he made, like
the fact that this was announced so late in the
day on Monday, he realized he had to do some
damage control here. He had to try to clean this up.
He had to try to clean up his image because
(37:13):
he cares very deeply about his image. He's had some
PR disasters before, and so he wants to make sure that,
you know, he can kind of deflect some of the
heat away from him. Well, you know, I only got
called in Kazari needed me to sell some tickets, and
I didn't want the spotlight to be on me. I
wanted to take a step back, which I mean that
the whole idea there is just very rich. But this
(37:36):
is where we are now. The Rock is not involved.
The Rock was never supposed to be involved, and it
makes what they did that much worse. And you can
look back on it and go, boy, you know, this
would have worked out so much better if they would
have saved that John Ceny Healter very much like what
they did with Austin in two thousand and one, which
ended up being a terrible idea. You know, for business,
this is a little bit different. Scene is on his
(37:56):
way out. You know, he's not the top guy anymore
like Austin was at the time. It's not an apples
and apples thing. But working it that way would have
been so much better. Like forget Travis Scott, forget the Rock.
If the Rock wasn't going to be a part of
this thing, he never should have been involved in the
first place. The soul stuff never should have happened. This
should never have been about the Rock, which is all
(38:18):
it turned into after that. It should have been Johnsena
wins the elimination Chamber because he didn't win the Royal
Rumble and the Chamber may have been his last shot
to go right into a championship match. It's his final WrestleMania,
and if they really wanted him to win that title
at WrestleMania and not push it off until Summer Slammer
sometime later in the year, then you do the match
(38:39):
John Cena going for Number seventeen, feeling the desperation to
break the record, and during the match he does the unthinkable,
him kicking Cody and the nuts at WrestleMania in the
way he did that would have been an amazing moment
that then led into a finish that nobody would have expected.
(39:00):
You get the combination the one two punch here of
Sina goes heel and he wins Number seventeen. But this
is not the way we thought it was going to happen.
And then he goes on from there to have this
heel run where he's counting down the number of dates
he's got left and he's very stoic, and I'm here
to ruin wrestling, and this is why I did what
I did, Like, there were so many other ways, better
(39:22):
ways to tell this story, but they just seemingly didn't
give it enough foresight, and they just came up with this.
It was almost very haphazard, just if you believe what
The Rock says, and that, to me is the most
stunning part of this entire thing. What little forethought they
put into what they ended up doing and the way
that they did it. If you made a list of
(39:42):
the five ways they could have gotten from point A
to point B, they went with the absolute worst possible plan,
and that's how they closed that WrestleMania this year. And
it sucks and it'll go down. I don't want to
say it was the worst. It will go down as
one of the worst finishes to a WrestleMania that they've
ever done in terms of how they got there. It
didn't have to be that way. Rock never should have
(40:02):
been involved in this in the first place. It was
one big tease for something they never intended on delivering on.
They had an obligation, i think, to the fans to
really give them a heads up and let them know
The Rock wouldn't be there, and it would have been
very simple. It would have been very very simple. Instead
of ignoring the Rock and pretending like he didn't exist
in those initial weeks coming out of elimination Chamber, it
(40:24):
could have been a very simple statement from The Rock
or even Sena on behalf of The Rock, mentioning that
the Rock basically said, Okay, you know, my job here
is done. The rest is up to you. But let's
be honest here. They wanted people to think that Rock
was going to be there because that just added to
the interest.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
In the show.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
They probably didn't want to come out and say Rock
wasn't going to be there. I think they were very
duplicitous about the entire thing. They knew exactly what they
were doing. You know, even those Rock t shirts everybody
was showing pictures of. Even though those Rock has finally
come back to Las Vegas shirts were made last year.
They were made over a year ago for the Wrestle Maydia,
a kickoff to for I think people think they were
(41:02):
made brand new for this year. They weren't, but evidently
they were spotted in Vegas. If they were on sale,
that's even worse. I mean, if they took those old
shirts and had them on sale and they're in their
shop in Vegas. I wasn't there, so I can't confirm
that they were on sale in Vegas. But if they were,
that makes it even worse. But maybe that's why. Maybe
they were like, oh, okay, let's keep people thinking the
Rock will be there. Maybe he'll change his mind, maybe
(41:24):
he will show up. Rock never should have been involved
in this though in the first place, and the fact
that Travis Scott and The Rock not being there is
what a lot of people will now forever associate with
John Cena breaking the record or winning number seventeen in
his final WrestleMania match is an embarrassment and had they
worked things just a little bit differently, this could have
been an all timer as far as finishes to a
(41:46):
WrestleMania and the way it worked it wasn't all timer,
but for all the wrong reasons. And there's no amount
of spin or damage control that The Rock can do
that is going to fix that.
Hey, guys, Solo Monster here and I'm not doing a
podcast this weekend because I am not going to be here,
but I could not let this whole Rock fiasco go
by without at least putting up a video for you
guys here on the YouTube chatnel talking about all of
this non sense. There's been a lot of talk and
chatter about the WrestleMania finish to Cody Rhodes and John
(00:22):
Sena WrestleMania Sunday being just almost universally panned, and deservedly
so because it sucked. Not that sena one number seventeen,
I had no issue with that at all, but the
match itself just not being very good. And then on
top of that, the way that everything played out for
the finish and Travis Scott Rock not being around just
(00:42):
really most everything since the elimination Chamber because of the
absence of The Rock, who became the focal point of
this entire thing, it just made for a very lame
finish a WrestleMania him not being there. So then late
on Monday came the sudden announcement that The Rock was
going to be appearing on the Pat McAfee show the
(01:03):
next day. Clean up on Aisle five. That's exactly what
this felt like. Damage control is not just the name
of a faction in WWE. It was on full display Tuesday.
So finally The Rock broke his silence as to why
he was not part of the build to John Cena
against Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania and why he did not
(01:26):
appear at all on the biggest show of the year.
This man did more to promote New Japan Pro Wrestling
and Rubik's Cube sales than he did wrestle media and
his answer it didn't make sense for the final Boss.
That don't work for me, brother. Nearly forty minutes he
(01:47):
spent talking about everything from Roman reigns and the Night
one main event, to Cody and Sina on Night two
and Travis Scott and his movies and his Papa Tuey
skincare line. You should have seen the people in the
live chat, because I was watching the Pat McAfee stream
on YouTube when Rock was on. You should have seen
(02:08):
these people in the live chat who are not wrestling
fans and they don't give two shits about wrestling. Like
thirty minutes into this, Rock is talking about his grooming
products and they are just begging for Pat to please
move on and talk actual sports. And you know, of
all the things that Rock talked about, the one thing
he did not talk about was the UFL, which he
(02:29):
is part owner of and would at least fit into
that sports discussion. That didn't come up. But all this
other stuff came up. But among the things that he
revealed is that he watched WrestleMania forty one from home
because he wanted the spotlight to be on John Cena.
And he also claimed that he only appeared at Elimination
Chamber because Ari Emmanuel called him due to ticket sales
(02:53):
being soft for the show in Toronto, so he came
to The Rock basically to beg The Rock to be
on the show to save ticket sales. As if as
if the ticket sales were horrendous. I mean, they may
have been soft, but you know, it's not like they
weren't selling tickets. But this is what led to The
Rock coming up with the idea for Cody's Soul, and
those conversations led to the idea from Triple H suggesting, hey,
(03:17):
why don't we turn John Cena heel? But really, if
you think about what Rock said on the Pat McAfee show.
Really what he did, I think it's fair to infer
this from the comments that he made. He revealed that
they had no real big creative direction for their key
match for WrestleMania, and what it boiled down to was
(03:38):
Ari Emmanuel wanting Rock to come into to goose ticket
sales for the pl e before WrestleMania, which is crazy, Like,
weeks before the Chamber Triple h just randomly comes up with, Hey,
why don't we turn John cita Heel, one of the
biggest stars in the history of our company who's in
his retirement year. You know, we hadn't thought about this,
(03:59):
so hey, why don't we turned John Cenaheel? Like, isn't
that the sort of thing they should already have thought
about two months before their biggest show of the year.
So let me go through what he said here, because
it's a lot too unpack here in rock speak, said,
speaking as DJ as Rock director of the Board and
(04:20):
not the final Boss, I got to tell you that
let's start with that ending and start with John becoming
the seventeen time heavyweight champion and becoming legitimizing himself. He
says as being without question the goat he is on
Mount Rushmore. Now got to kick a guy off to
put him on. I think now Dusty goes to the back.
He was always on my Mount Rushmore. He goes on
(04:42):
the back there with me. I'll be raising my eyebrows
back there in the back of Mount Rushmore. But I
think that the way John at the end of the
night raising the title, that was the bottom line, that
was the north Star.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
And I loved it. I love that moment.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I think he's going to go on to have this
insane run as a heel. And what I love about
this and what I love about John is I like
to think that I keep not only my finger on
the pulse of things. You and I have talked about this.
Don't keep your finger on the pulse of put your
whole hand on the pulse of things. And that way things.
And that means what is he saying here, meaning the
(05:18):
fans in their sentiment. And I love that the fans
are so engaged, they're so connected to John's heel turn.
Now I see a few fans saying that, oh, I
really don't believe he's a bad guy. So he's playing
a bad guy. But here's the thing, you don't have
to believe that he's a bad guy. You know why,
because he's not a bad guy. He's a good guy.
(05:38):
I've known the guy for twenty years. We've gone up
and down to Helen back. We talk all the time,
we text all the time. He's not a bad guy.
He's telling the truth now and you could feel that
in his delivery because he's telling the truth. This is
twenty five years of Imagine going out every single night
for twenty five years, regardless of where you're at and
(05:59):
knowing that you're gonna get cheered and know that you're
going to get booed, and in some places it's even harder,
you're going to get booed out of the building. That's
a hard psychological place to be. I give John so
much credit, and he goes on from there and he's
he's giving scene of more praise for taking a risk
and going heal. But then he gets into the real
meat and potatoes of this. He goes I got a
(06:21):
call about a month before the elimination chamber from Ari Emanuel,
who we know owns TKO. TKO owns WWE. He's been
my longtime business partner and one of my best friends
for over twenty years. He said, we need help at
Elimination Chamber. Ticket sales are a little slow. But beyond that,
he goes, what we're finding is with Elimination Chamber, it's
(06:41):
become the pay per view that's been interesting. You know,
fans have fun, but it's also a conduit to WrestleMania.
And how do we create an elimination chamber that people
have to tune in to see?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
How do we create that?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And he goes, right now, we don't have that, and
he said, let's have the Final Boss show up. What
if the Final Boss appear years and the Elimination Chamber?
I said, well, let me give it some thought and
let me get back to you on that. And so
I did, and I got back to Ari, and I
got back to Triple H and Nick Cohn and we
had a call and I said, I have an idea.
What's most important to the Final Boss. It's not titles,
(07:17):
it's not money, it's not fame, been there, done that,
grateful for that. Final Boss wants your soul. So then
he gets into this discussion about how it was a
litmus test. They were taking a temperature check to see
how the fans would respond to Cody possibly going heel
and selling his soul to the Rock, and he basically
(07:39):
he believes that Cody's got this great heel run in him.
He's not wrong when he says that, I think Cody
has it within him to have a great heel run
down the line.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
And Rock was saying all the right things here in
this interview.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I'm not talking about turning Cody heel now, I'm talking
about doing it down the road. What I believe is
that Rock probably wanted Cody to go heel.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I think the idea it was for Cody Rose to
sell his soul to the Rock, And there were people there,
whether it was Cody himself or Triple H, who had
enough sense to say no and push back and say
that's a fucking dumb idea, which it would have been.
It would have been a fucking stupid idea for Cody Roads,
their number one babyface right now who up until recently,
it wasn't until this program with John Cena that we
(08:21):
first started seeing fans booing Cody in some places, his
reactions were still rock solid, right one of their top
merch movers, Like people bought into Cody Rhoads. The American
Nightmare WWE champion. As he was coming upon his first
year as champion, he was getting good reactions from the crowd.
(08:41):
Now all of a sudden, and this was always going
to be a risk, you know, putting him in there
with John Cena. Whether Sena was a babyface or a
heel in some places, and I don't know if it
was just the veguest thing for WrestleMania. We saw it
a few weeks ago on TV. There now are at
least pockets of people who have taken to booing Cody,
not happening before this. So yes, Rock absolutely Cody down
(09:05):
the road great heel. I don't believe for a second
that he's looking at this and going, oh, I don't
want Cody to go heill now, but like you know,
later on down the road. No, I think he did
want Cody to go heill now. And I think John
Cena was the second choice. And Triple H is the
one who kind of threw it out there and said
what if John won heel, which Rock in this interview said, oh,
(09:26):
I think that's a great idea. I said, I love it,
But now you got to ask John how he feels
about it, And of course John seen is gonna say
yes because John Cena has said before like he shows
up to work and this is how he was with Vince,
where he doesn't politic he doesn't lobby for matches. He
has said, I've never in my entire career lobbied for
(09:47):
a match. I want to work with this guy, gotta
work with this person. And I get the sense that
he shows up and maybe he'll have some creative input
into certain things, but he largely just kind of goes
with the flow. Whatever they want me to do, Okay,
you're the boss, I'll do it. I mean, it seems
pretty apparent, even based on what they've had him do
here during this program.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
It's like, hey, John, what do you think about this? Okay? Sure?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And of course, because John Cena he's got one foot
out the door, he's got one foot out the door already,
he doesn't care and he's probably thinking, okay, yeah, I
never had the chance to do this before, you know,
after I had been you know, turned baby face. I
wanted to go heel. We didn't do it. So yeah, okay, sure, fine, whatever,
he's practically already done. He doesn't give a shit you
(10:33):
want me to turn heel I'll turn heel, sure, But
the whole thing with Rock, you know, and Cody and everything,
it was Meltzer. It was actually Meltzer many many months ago,
who I think was the one who reported that Rock
wanted Cody to go heal and there was pushback and
Sena was the second choice. And you know, a lot
of people have mocked Dave for his reports on this
(10:55):
and other things that he has gotten wrong, but you
know what, he has owed an apology not only by
myself and other content creators, but honestly by the Rock.
Because after that report came out months and months ago
that Rock was not going to be at WrestleMania, Rock
himself applied to someone's comment on Instagram and said, in
so many words that that's bullshit or don't buy into
(11:17):
that bullshit. So if anybody owes Meltzer, honestly, the biggest
apology should be coming from the Rock, because as it
turned out, he was right, and the Rock was sitting
on his ass at home watching WrestleMania just like everybody else.
But he went on and on about how smart Cody
is and what an intelligent guy he is, and oh,
(11:37):
you know, Triple H is great. You know, I've been
kicking around ideas with this guy for twenty years, and
you know, all this stuff and blah blah blah. He's
letting us into the creative process here and how this all,
you know, this all came together. And then he said,
we had this great thing at Elimination Chamber. This is
you know, very successful segment with him and John Cena
(11:59):
and Travis Scott. And he called John after the Elimination Chamber.
I talked to him, I talked to Cody, and I said,
I think the Final Boss's work here is done. Like
we've established it. We've pulled off the greatest angle in
the history of professional wrestling other than Hulk Hogan turning
heel back.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
In the nineties.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
I'm glad he said that, by the way, because that's
still number one. He said, I think this is amazing.
We have six weeks now, let's build you now, go
out there and build to it, go crush it, and
I'll be right there with you, and I'm always here
if you need me. But I think it's best for
the Final Boss to not be involved in that finish.
You guys go, You've got six weeks to plan for that,
(12:42):
which again is crazy to me that they were that
close to WrestleMania, their biggest event of the year, and
seemingly had no other grand plan, or maybe they did,
and they were very easy to just sort of cast
it aside and have six weeks to try to build
something with a guy who wasn't even going to be
there every single week. I mean they did that turn
(13:04):
at Elimination Chamber. We didn't see seen it for two weeks.
Two weeks later, he showed up, never even addressed Cody.
Roads showed up the following week in Glasgow, didn't really
address Cody Rhads. Cody addressed him, but he had nothing
really to say about Cody. It wasn't until they got
to London at the very end, almost a month. It
(13:25):
was basically a month after the Elimination Chamber, and we
got a great back and forth between Cody and Sina.
Finally it took a fucking month to get it. And
that was basically all we got on until the night
before Madio and they were on SmackDown together, So Sina
wasn't even there every single week Rock. It actually would
have been helpful. I think for Rock you can plug
(13:46):
him into a spot here and there, maybe on a
week where Sina wasn't going to be there. But again,
you know in this bill to WrestleMania, what was missing
is they decided to tell this story or Sina did.
This is his take on it, where, yeah, I'm not
going to give the fans what they want. You want gear,
you want new music. I'm not doing this because I
know you want it. You get nothing from me, right,
That's the story they've decided to go with. The problem
(14:09):
is a year ago, you think back to that build
to WrestleMania forty, which ended up being great, but it
was a complete just clusterfuck how we got there. I mean,
I look back on that and it's like, I can't
believe that we had Cody Rhodes win the Royal Rumble
and then the idea was for The Rock to just
show up and take his spot the way that he did,
and that somebody thought that that was a great idea.
(14:29):
I don't even know the Triple h honestly thought that
was a great idea. But you know, this is what
the Rock wants to do. When The Rock wants his
match with Roman Reigns, which he ended up not getting
because he saw the blowback, and this is the thing
about The Rock. He's very, very cognizant of the online
reaction because he saw the reaction and he had a pivot.
He talked about this in the making of wrestle Batia
(14:50):
forty documentary. That's where the meme photo comes from. He's
sitting there and he's he's waving his arms around. He's
talking about how this happened and how that happened, and
got to listen to the people. Sometimes he was getting
just destroyed by people on social media. So they pivoted
and we ended up with the Final Boss and in
the end it all worked out. But even the weeks
(15:11):
where Rock wasn't on the show, he would record these
social media videos and these Instagram videos and I look
forward to him every Friday there was going to be
a new ig drop from the Rock and he'd be
cutting a promo on Cody and Mama Rhodes, and you know,
it was entertaining and it got people excited for WrestleMania,
and of course it helped having that big storyline payoff
(15:31):
where Cody's got to finish the story. Roman finally loses,
like you weren't going to have that this year, and
so there is that recognition that whatever they were going
to come up with for Wrestle Media this year probably
wasn't going to be able to match that moment because
last year was like the big payoff to everything, but
we didn't have any of that this year. They shot
(15:52):
an angle with Rock and Seena standing side by side
together at the end of the elimination chamber. What did
they think the fans were going to thing? This is
what aggravates the shit out of me. There are times
where you will have these wrestlers or you know, people
who work for the company that will go well, just
you gotta let it play out. You can't just fantasy
book everything and you're gonna You're gonna come up with
(16:14):
all these grand ideas and when they don't happen, well,
you have nobody to blame for it but yourself. Sometimes
that's true. I'm guilty of that. Sometimes your mind is racing,
oh my god, this could go this way and this
way and this way, and then when it goes that way,
it's like, ah, fuck, that sucks. Yea, this idea was better.
Well yeah, but you're the one who, you know, decided
to try to come up with all these ideas and
(16:36):
you set yourself up for disappointment. But in this case,
you cannot tell me that they expected most people to
look at what they did in Toronto on that show
and not assume that there was now an alliance of
some sort between The Rock and John Cena and that
we wouldn't see them at some point at least once
or twice together standing in the ring on TV like
(16:57):
we had Rock and Romans standing together united the ring
on TV. In the build up to last year's show,
we got nothing. John Cena wasn't on social media cutting promos,
dropping him every week when he wasn't there. John Cena
didn't do shit outside of what we saw him doing
on TV. He posts his motivational quotes on X like
he always does, and that's it. And we only got
(17:20):
him when we got him, which wasn't every week. We
didn't have that same level of engagement. We didn't have
the same kind of fun leading up to this match
at WrestleMania, and then we had last year. Oh, but
that's what John Cena wants. He doesn't want you to
have fun. That's the whole point, Solomon, So you're missing
the whole point of the story. This is not supposed
to be fun This is not supposed to be fun Boy.
Is that a shitty build to WrestleMania. I hope that's
(17:43):
not gonna be the way it is for the rest
of the year. I hope we didn't get a shitty
main event at WrestleMania because it was supposed to be
that way, because we got John Cena for the rest
of the fucking year. The way people will try to
rationalize these things is ridiculous to me. I cannot hold
anybody respond who saw what they did at Elimination Chamber
and got excited, assuming that we were going to get
(18:04):
Rock and Seena together on TV in some way, or
certainly we would see some kind of follow up or
pay off to this WrestleMania with the two of them,
and they gave us nothing. People have a right to
be disappointed. People have a right to be upset about that,
and they don't need it thrown back in their face
like they're wrong for not enjoying what they're being given.
(18:24):
Triple h was making comments like that leading up to
WrestleMania the interview he did with Peter Rosenberg Man, I
wish the critics would just fuck off, just be a fan,
just shut up.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Remember when Rock showed up on NXT back in January.
First we had him on the Netflix premiere and he
was board member Dwayne pointing out Cody in the front row.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
He's my boy.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Me and Cody were going to share some teremana later,
and people like they were aghast, like this is how
you follow up to all the Rock and Cody stuff
from last year. Now they're like best friends. It's ridiculous
that that's the follow up.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
To everything here.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
But then he showed up on NXT and he said,
I didn't plan any comments. I have no idea what
I'm going to say. I'm just going to go out there,
And it was very apparent that he had not given
any thought to what he was going to say, and
maybe he had a little Teremana before he went out there.
Because that promo, that whole segment to close out that
episode of nxtm me, I know why they did it,
because they popped a huge number. I think they did
(19:24):
like nine hundred and fifty thousand people on CW that night.
But it was fucking terrible. But you remember what Rock
said during that promo. Basically it was like shut your
mouth and enjoy the ride the Rock is going to
take you on. The Rock is thinking twenty steps ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
No, he's not.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
He was full of shit when he said that, literally,
just trying to come up with shit to say before
they went off the air. They just wanted to rock
on the show to pop a number, which they did great.
It didn't mean anything, There was nothing. There was no
substance to what he was saying. Let the Rock take
you on the ride that he's going to take you on.
There was no ride. There's no ride. This ride went
(20:02):
about as well as Austin's atv at WrestleMania. This week's
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vpn for free. Then he says, I love the finish
(23:05):
of the match. Now I would have finessed things a
little differently on how they got there, but that's just
me creatively. There's a lot of minds in the room,
but that's my thought. But ultimately the bottom line is
I love John getting number seventeen. My thoughts are always
to Cody because of what we've established with him and
his story and the kind of babyface that he is.
(23:27):
So if done right, and I think if it was
finessed right and if nuanced right down the road, that
could work, that guy can have an incredible not only
babyface run again his champion, but also an unheard of
run as a heel down the road. And then I'm
not being involved in the finish of the match, he said.
(23:47):
They know when I come to them and them meeting
Triple H and Nick and Ari and I lay this
out and I say, hey, here's how I really feel
it should go. We can insert the final boss in
the end of this finish, but then where do we go?
There are other commitments that I have, and I want
to also be careful that we're not overstepping and leaning
over our skis too much here to get involved with
(24:09):
the finish, And I said, why get involved when the
spotlight should just be on John seventeen time heel Champion.
What does twenty twenty five look like. If this man
is saying he's going to ruin professional wrestling, that to
me is the anchoring storyline. It's not the soul right now.
And he's like, oh, but we'll go back to it
(24:30):
at some point. We'll get back to the soul stuff,
you know, down the road, and he's, you know, again,
blathering on and on and on, and he admits that
when Travis Scott came out at WrestleMania that most people
would have expected that Rock was coming out next, and
that's where he made the comment about how he was
trying to be diplomatic about it. Well, I would have
(24:51):
done this a little bit differently. I would have finessed
this or adjusted that. That was basically his way of
saying that, you know, Triple h and the career of
minds who put that finish together. They either didn't run
it by Rock and so he's basically throwing him under
the bus, or he maybe was aware of what they
were gonna do, but he's like, I better come out
(25:13):
here and say, well, you know, I would have done
this maybe a little bit differently, because people are shitting
all over it because it was fucking stupid, Like it
was very, very dumb. The minute that Travis Scott came out.
You heard Fien Fien fifty thousand times that weekend. But
here comes Travis Scott. You have to assume just based
on how the elimination cham pranded, which, by the way,
(25:34):
is the last time we saw Travis Scott. We also
saw Rock Rock literally walked to the ring with Travis Scott.
What do you think people were expecting? And that's what
just blows me away about this entire thing, that there
were people who actually thought this was a good idea. Yeah,
let's do the finish this way. We'll have Travis Scott
(25:54):
come out, and then we'll have Sena do all the
heel things that he'll Sena would do, and then he'll
just pin Cody and that'll be the end of it.
But you know, in a way, even though it might
not have affected the direct finish of the match, Travis
Scott was still out there affecting the outcome of the match. Right,
he took Cody's attention briefly away from John Cena. He
did play a role in the finish of this match,
(26:15):
and the Rock never showed his face. Would it have
made that much of a difference if Rock just showed
up and stood in the eye away and clapped for
John Cena, maybe at least it would have made sense
of things. You know, there are some people who I
saw trying to make the argument, well, Sena never really
sold his soul. He just went heel, Right, he just
(26:39):
kicked Cody in the balls, and he's articulated since then
why he did that. He resents Cody and so that's
why he did what he did. None of it makes
any sense, and anybody trying to make sense of it, honestly,
I mean, is just embarrassing themselves. It doesn't make any sense.
John Cena had already won the elimination chamber the night
that he turned heel. He won the elimination chamber. He
(27:01):
had a guaranteed WWE Championship match of WrestleMania. And so
you look at it now and you say to yourself,
why didn't they just save the sceni heel turn for WrestleMania.
Why did Rock even have to be involved in this
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Let's take him at his word that Ari Emmanuel came
to him practically begging and saying, Rock, can we get
you on the Elimination Chamber. Tickets are a little soft,
Tickets are a little egy. I wonder why. I wonder
how much those fucking tickets were. Tickets are a little soft.
We need the final boss on the show. Ari Emmanuel
didn't come to The Rock and say, we need you
(27:38):
involved with Cody Rhodes and John Cena, we need you
involved in the top story on the show. He just said,
I need you in Toronto for the Elimination Chamber so
we can move more tickets, so we could put your
name on the poster. Remember when they updated the poster
for the Elimination Chamber, they took everybody off except The Rock. Literally,
the Rock was the only one on the updated poster.
They made it all about him. Nobody said that he
(27:59):
had to be involved with Cody in this He could
have done anything on the show. He could have had
a throwaway comedy segment with somebody in the mid card
that he could have given a fucking rock bottom to.
It wouldn't have mattered if all they were interested in
was selling tickets. The tickets were already bought and paid for.
You get your Rock appearance. And truly, if he's not
going to be involved in the bill to WrestleMania, he
(28:21):
goes home mission accomplished. You moved a few thousand extra tickets.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Good.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
But he came up with this whole elaborate idea about
Cody's soul and everything else. As soon as he inserted
himself into this main event storyline, he had an obligation
to follow through with what people would have expected out
of it, which is that the Rock is going to
be involved. Otherwise, I have no fucking idea why he
came up with that idea in the first place. He said,
let me get back to you, I'll come up with
(28:46):
an idea. This is all on him. This is all
on him. This was his idea, and I can only
imagine somebody like Triple You know, a lot of people
talk about the relationship between Rock and Triple H. And
there are a lot of conspiracy theorists out there. I
don't really think it's all that big of a conspiracy theory.
There has always been, always been, going back to when
they were still young guys trying to make their way
(29:07):
in this company, a professional tension and jealousy between the two.
And I think the jealousy part was probably more from
Triple H's side because Rock came in and he got
he got a lot, a lot quicker than Triple H did.
Because Triple H came in ninety five. Rock came in
at the end of ninety six and it wasn't all
rainbows for him initially with the Rocky mai Via stuff,
(29:29):
but within a year he was already on his way.
And I'm sure there was a jealousy there, and they
came up right neck and neck, right they were coming
up at the same time. That's why I say I
think Triple H and Rock like Rock is his greatest rival.
Very telling that he didn't mention Rock, by the way,
in his Hall of Fame speech mentioned a lot of
(29:49):
people but not Rock, but there was I think there
was always that tension there between them. I don't want
to say they hate each other. Maybe at one time
they did, but you can't tell me that there are
not a lot of games being played behind the scenes,
a lot of tit for tat. There's a lot of
shit going on behind the scenes that we could talk
(30:11):
about what we think is going on, but we probably
don't even know the half of it. And I'll get
to another aspect that is here in a moment. But
if you're Triple H and you're the head of creative
right you're the chief content officer, it's got to be
frustrating when the Rock just shows up, whether Ari told
him to or the Rock decided he wanted to and
(30:31):
blows everything up, Like what the original plan for WrestleMania
was going to be before the soul stuff. I would
love to know, like what they had, what they had
set in stone here two months before their biggest show
of the year. I go all the way back to
Bad Blood. Everybody was trying to like, oh, connect the dots.
This was all mapped out from a year earlier. This
(30:53):
is long term storytelling, This is long term booking. This
is cinema. They're cooking all these fucking dumb one words
people come up with the describe as shit. Rock showing
up at Bad Blood was nothing but Rock just wanting
to show up. He had his belt, He had his
Brahma bull belt that was given to him by Muhammad
Ali's widow. He walks all over the place with it.
(31:14):
He shows up at Bad Blood and then we don't
see him again for months until the Netflix premiere, and
then that's not the Rock, that's a Dwayne the board member.
So tell me what was the point of the Bad
Blood thing?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Then?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
If this was all part of long term booking and
long term storytelling, what the hell was the purpose of
his appearance in Atlanta at Bad Blood? There was none.
He got people talking, but it didn't lead to anything.
It went nowhere. So this is the kind of nonsense.
I'm sure Triple H looks at this and goes, ah,
fuck you, He's he's gonna.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Be on the show.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
All right, we got we gotta upend everything and come
up with you know what we're gonna do here. I'm
sure there's a lot of that going on. Look at
the Dave Lagrecis stuff. Okay took to his Instagram this
morning to respond to Dave Logreca criticizing the Rocks comments
on Pat McAfee's show now logreca I'm busted Open. He
(32:10):
went on a huge rant coming out of the WrestleMania
Made event on Sunday, to the point where I was
a little worried for the man's health. But he was
not happy about that finish either. But then there was
a whole other rant on Busted Open about some of
the comments that Rock made on McAfee's show, and in
particular the comments he made about how well, you know,
(32:31):
I would I would have finessed or adjusted the creative
a little bit on how they did things at WrestleMania.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
But you know, that's just me.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
And basically he said the same thing that I said before,
and I agree with him one hundred percent. He effectively
threw Triple H and his team under the bus with
those comments because what he was saying you don't have
to read, you know, too hard between the lines to
see what he was saying. He may have enjoyed, you know,
John winning number seventeen and the way that happened, but
if the Rock had full control the way that he
(32:58):
would have liked to, then that finish would not have
gone down the way it did. Maybe Travis Scott wouldn't
have been there because now he's taken a ton of
flack for not being there because Travis Scott was there
and led everybody to believe that he would be there.
So anyway, he responded to Lagreca, is what he said, Hi, Dave,
(33:19):
the business is a complete work, always has been, always
will be, every aspect of it, every match, every interview.
Please join me, Cody, Cina, Brian talking about Brian Gowertz
and the rest of us for our creative discussions so
you can expand your perspective. Until then, stop ranting. It's
(33:39):
not healthy, my friend, enjoy the show. PS tell Bubbaret
that I have Grand Marnier and hushpuppies for all of us.
So evidently Paul Leveck falls under the category of the
rest of us. That's certainly not going to quiet the
people who think that there is a lot of underlying
tension here behind the scenes between the Rock and Triple H.
(34:03):
And again, I don't think that's some grand conspiracy theory.
I think that absolutely is something that is a real
thing that is happening, and that may be the most
interesting story of all that plays out in these next
few years in WWE, because Can I envision a WWE
one day where it's Rock and Gowertz is sort of
(34:24):
his chief of staff, his right hand man, basically what
Patterson was to Vince. Can I envision a power structure
creatively in this company one day, and I don't know
when that would be, but one day where Rock is
the guy in charge, calling the shots and coming up
with the ideas, and Gowertz is his head writer or
his right hand man. Absolutely, and I think Triple H
(34:45):
knows this. So the minute that you see the WWE
business begins to take a dip and the numbers begin
to dip because business may be booming right now, but
it don't boom forever. What goes up must come down.
When that happens and things start to soften and come
back down to earth, that's when things get very interesting.
(35:07):
And Triple H, I'm sure one hundred percent understands this,
but you know him saying, you know, just just enjoy
it and stop ranting again, very similar to what we
heard Triple H saying in the lead up to WrestleMania.
And I just think it's completely insulting, you know, to
the fans when you just basically tell them shut up.
And just enjoy the show. We know what we're doing,
(35:28):
you don't, and just enjoy what we feed you, enjoy
what we give you. That was basically the Vince McMahon
mentality for so many years, and it almost feels like
we're right back to that, or maybe it never really changed,
but this is how they really feel, and the mask
is sort of slipping a little bit. And I think
the reason Triple H made the comments that he did
(35:50):
and sounded very defensive, which he was. I said, you know,
I think I mentioned this on on TNT the other day.
I said, when when your Triple H and you open
your little rant as he did by saying this is
going to sound defensive, it's because it sounds defensive. And
the reason I think he was so defensive is because
this is really the first time since he has fully
(36:12):
taken over as the head of creative where he was
really getting it, you know, as far as the criticisms
for the Road to WrestleMania, he was really getting hit
hard and taking it on the chin in a way
that he didn't last year or even the year before.
And he's not used to that. Right, He's the Savior,
thank God, the evil bad man is gone, and we
(36:32):
have Triple H now running creative and I do think
we've gotten more good than bad. I'm certainly not like
one of these fucking idiots who's like, oh, we need
Vince back. We got to have Vince back now, Like
sit the fuck down. But he hasn't taken criticism like this,
and I think he's getting very defensive about it, and
that's why you see him lashing out because we didn't
(36:53):
hear any of this in the lead up to WrestleMania
last year, but we got it this year. So the
whole situation and just to me, it's a mess. Rock
even coming out and making the comments he made, like
the fact that this was announced so late in the
day on Monday, he realized he had to do some
damage control here. He had to try to clean this up.
He had to try to clean up his image because
(37:13):
he cares very deeply about his image. He's had some
PR disasters before, and so he wants to make sure that,
you know, he can kind of deflect some of the
heat away from him. Well, you know, I only got
called in Kazari needed me to sell some tickets, and
I didn't want the spotlight to be on me. I
wanted to take a step back, which I mean that
the whole idea there is just very rich. But this
(37:36):
is where we are now. The Rock is not involved.
The Rock was never supposed to be involved, and it
makes what they did that much worse. And you can
look back on it and go, boy, you know, this
would have worked out so much better if they would
have saved that John Ceny Healter very much like what
they did with Austin in two thousand and one, which
ended up being a terrible idea. You know, for business,
this is a little bit different. Scene is on his
(37:56):
way out. You know, he's not the top guy anymore
like Austin was at the time. It's not an apples
and apples thing. But working it that way would have
been so much better. Like forget Travis Scott, forget the Rock.
If the Rock wasn't going to be a part of
this thing, he never should have been involved in the
first place. The soul stuff never should have happened. This
should never have been about the Rock, which is all
(38:18):
it turned into after that. It should have been Johnsena
wins the elimination Chamber because he didn't win the Royal
Rumble and the Chamber may have been his last shot
to go right into a championship match. It's his final WrestleMania,
and if they really wanted him to win that title
at WrestleMania and not push it off until Summer Slammer
sometime later in the year, then you do the match
(38:39):
John Cena going for Number seventeen, feeling the desperation to
break the record, and during the match he does the unthinkable,
him kicking Cody and the nuts at WrestleMania in the
way he did that would have been an amazing moment
that then led into a finish that nobody would have expected.
(39:00):
You get the combination the one two punch here of
Sina goes heel and he wins Number seventeen. But this
is not the way we thought it was going to happen.
And then he goes on from there to have this
heel run where he's counting down the number of dates
he's got left and he's very stoic, and I'm here
to ruin wrestling, and this is why I did what
I did, Like, there were so many other ways, better
(39:22):
ways to tell this story, but they just seemingly didn't
give it enough foresight, and they just came up with this.
It was almost very haphazard, just if you believe what
The Rock says, and that, to me is the most
stunning part of this entire thing. What little forethought they
put into what they ended up doing and the way
that they did it. If you made a list of
(39:42):
the five ways they could have gotten from point A
to point B, they went with the absolute worst possible plan,
and that's how they closed that WrestleMania this year. And
it sucks and it'll go down. I don't want to
say it was the worst. It will go down as
one of the worst finishes to a WrestleMania that they've
ever done in terms of how they got there. It
didn't have to be that way. Rock never should have
(40:02):
been involved in this in the first place. It was
one big tease for something they never intended on delivering on.
They had an obligation, i think, to the fans to
really give them a heads up and let them know
The Rock wouldn't be there, and it would have been
very simple. It would have been very very simple. Instead
of ignoring the Rock and pretending like he didn't exist
in those initial weeks coming out of elimination Chamber, it
(40:24):
could have been a very simple statement from The Rock
or even Sena on behalf of The Rock, mentioning that
the Rock basically said, Okay, you know, my job here
is done. The rest is up to you. But let's
be honest here. They wanted people to think that Rock
was going to be there because that just added to
the interest.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
In the show.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
They probably didn't want to come out and say Rock
wasn't going to be there. I think they were very
duplicitous about the entire thing. They knew exactly what they
were doing. You know, even those Rock t shirts everybody
was showing pictures of. Even though those Rock has finally
come back to Las Vegas shirts were made last year.
They were made over a year ago for the Wrestle Maydia,
a kickoff to for I think people think they were
(41:02):
made brand new for this year. They weren't, but evidently
they were spotted in Vegas. If they were on sale,
that's even worse. I mean, if they took those old
shirts and had them on sale and they're in their
shop in Vegas. I wasn't there, so I can't confirm
that they were on sale in Vegas. But if they were,
that makes it even worse. But maybe that's why. Maybe
they were like, oh, okay, let's keep people thinking the
Rock will be there. Maybe he'll change his mind, maybe
(41:24):
he will show up. Rock never should have been involved
in this though in the first place, and the fact
that Travis Scott and The Rock not being there is
what a lot of people will now forever associate with
John Cena breaking the record or winning number seventeen in
his final WrestleMania match is an embarrassment and had they
worked things just a little bit differently, this could have
been an all timer as far as finishes to a
(41:46):
WrestleMania and the way it worked it wasn't all timer,
but for all the wrong reasons. And there's no amount
of spin or damage control that The Rock can do
that is going to fix that.
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